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Saturday, July 01, 2006

Courtesy of the Government of the United States

Israeli fighter jets bombed 20 targets in Gaza, including the Interior Ministry, which it said had been used by militants to stage meetings, while artillery hit the northern strip with 500 shells in the 24 hours until yesterday morning.

Now if you have a problem with my assertion that this is a direct responsibility of the US Government please read on.

Although Israel is an "advanced, industrialized, technologically sophisticated country," it "receives more U.S. aid per capita annually than the total annual [Gross Domestic Product] per capita of several Arab states." Approximately a third of the entire U.S. foreign aid budget goes to Israel, "even though Israel comprises just…one-thousandth of the world's total population, and already has one of the world's higher per capita incomes."(emphasis added)

(there are a lot of other interesting facts in this article, worth a perusal)

Now quite of bit of the foreign aid that goes to Israel is for military purposes, like buying jets:From here:

If you don't think that 31 billion dollars over 16 years can't buy a lot of destructive power, well....

(oh, and that extra 1.2 billion dollars in year 2000? That was to implement the Wye River Accords. Remember that? No? Well, we paid Israel to withdraw and they weren't very successful, but Israel got the money anyway. Oh, I don't think the Palestinians got much at all.)

Oh, and the Palestinians? Those people? Well, they are having a tough time of it:

The U.S. House of Representatives yesterday approved the Bush administration's foreign aid bill, which includes provisions to limit financial aid to the Palestinian Authority if it continues to engage in, and encourage, terrorism.